Social care must be improved in eight areas of England

December 7th, 2009

Eight local authorities in England have been told they must dramatically improve the social care services available to adults, reports BBC News.

Poole, Cornwall, Solihull, Surrey, South Tyneside, Southwark, Peterborough and Bromley are the eight authorities which will receive extra help after The Care Quality Commission found they had not shown the high level improvement that other authorities had displayed with 95% of councils in the top 2 categories.

The report covers England’s 148 local authorities and also independent providers of care services and whilst they saw improvement, the commission said there are still too many adults being let down by the system.

Experts believe that the reason for the high improvement in 95% of local authorities is purely down to the fact they have been providing care to less people. To cope with the high demand of people going into care, the council have restricted who is eligible for free or subsidised care.

Thankfully the administrators have recognised the problem and from next year changes to the ratings system will give more weight to the views of those using care services and fines will be able to be levied against providers the regulator considers are not providing a good enough service.